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05 July 2012

Blueberry Fail and Recovery

It started innocently enough.

I was going to make a blueberry cobbler to take to a 4th of July celebration. I put the ingredients together in the pan and placed the pan in the pre-heated oven. Half way through the baking time I smelled smoke. When I opened the oven door, I realized the cobbler had bubbled over and over and over. There was a blackened mess on the bottom of the oven. Uh-oh. If I continued to bake, the smoke detector would go off, so I turned the oven off and removed the cobbler to the refrigerator. I wish I could say the oven is clean, but because there is a problem with the interior light I dare not use the self clean feature and have resorted to spray oven cleaner. Twice.

On my way to the cook out, I stopped at the store and purchased an apple pie and a carton of ice cream. I took the only dessert, can you believe it? It was a hit and I didn't bring any home. In fact, I didn't even get a piece of pie.

There is a silver lining: the oven is now clean enough to call a repairman to fix the light. Yeah!

9 comments:

It is hard to tell when something is going to bubble over and make a mess. My self-clean feature creates toxic fumes that drive me out of the house, so I don't use it. I've resorted to a silicone sheet for the bottom of the oven. It works like a charm.

I am a major purchaser of the extra wide, heavy duty foil, which then gors on a large baking sheet and under anything that even looks like it mighy boil over. Saved my ass more times than I can count. I've also discovered that Maggie the Wonder Dog (heart of gold, brains of dust) loves cleaning up the clotted up stuff on the foil -- lucky for me because I don't think she'd fit in the oven.

I don't do desserts very often any more but in the past I've put my pies inside a brown grocery bag. Believe it or not, it doesn't catch fire and you can just throw the bag in the garbage. Clean up is easy-peasy. I learned this trick from my mother who baked every week and always put her apple pie in the brown paper bag.